


at the mercy of you

by starwarringavengers



Category: Star Wars
Genre: Ben Solo Needs A Hug, F/M, Force Bond (Star Wars), Inappropriate Use of the Force, POV Rey (Star Wars), Reylo Week, Sex In A Cave, The Force Ships It
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-09
Updated: 2019-12-09
Packaged: 2021-02-26 03:21:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,207
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21726709
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starwarringavengers/pseuds/starwarringavengers
Summary: Rey and Ben Solo's bond hasn't opened since the Battle of Crait. But that doesn't mean it hasn't strengthened. He follows her to an Outer Rim planet, and Rey knows then that she can't escape him - and she's not sure she much wants to try.---Includes pouty Kylo Ren, and cave sex. Enjoy.
Relationships: Kylo Ren/Rey, Rey & Ben Solo | Kylo Ren, Rey/Ben Solo
Comments: 19
Kudos: 267





	at the mercy of you

**Author's Note:**

> Hellloooooo! If you like this please drop me a comment that says literally anything! I live for it!

Their connection hasn’t opened since the Battle of Crait.

They can’t see each other. But that doesn’t mean they can’t _feel_ each other. And feel, they can. Like a pull from a string that neither can see, Rey can feel when Kylo Ren is awake and when he’s stuck in a dream, when he’s angry and when he’s content (which isn’t often). Similarly, Ben Solo can feel when Rey is frustrated, lonely, crumbling under the weight of the role the Resistance has given her - and he really wishes he could tell her that mediation would help. But they’re both helpless in it, the bond never allowing them to see each other, like a foggy pane that gives only the outline.

Rey avoids telling anyone about the connection, how it had opened in the first place and how she came to see Ben Solo appear before her. She’s content for the moment with the knowledge that she doesn’t have to look at him directly, because she has no idea what she’d say. The Battle of Crait ended with her shutting a door, both literally and metaphorically, in his face. What does she say after that? But perhaps worse, she doesn’t know what _he_ might say.

Despite the lack of physical manifestations, the bond seems to have strengthened itself in other ways - namely the sharing of emotion. But it seems to sense proximity in some ways, too. Rey can’t explain quite how she knows when the First Order’s ships have jumped into hyperspace give or take a thousand light-years. Ben doesn’t want to tell anyone that he knows _exactly_ where the rest of the Resistance - Rey included - are hiding.

He figures that it’s a tactical move to give her a head start.

The only time they appear together is in dreams. And it’s hardly there, bodies like ghosts rather than flesh and blood. Rey sees him staring at her from across a room. Ben sees her waking up in front of a fireplace. It goes on like this for months. A tug this way, a pull back, a glimpse of the inside of a shiny First Order ship when she rounds the corner, or the weathered interior of the Falcon when he opens his door.

Rey, fully and completely and most unfortunately aware that she’s become a walking ball of anxiety, sets everyone on edge with her presence - exactly the thing she _doesn’t_ want to do. She _wants_ to be able to inspire calm in people, to be the rock that the remaining members of the Resistance are looking for her to be. But her soul just won’t still.

“You gotta get off-world, Rey,” Poe says to her one day, while they’re sitting at a table after lunch, hidden in the bustle of the Outer Rim outpost they’ve been staying at. Leia located an old friend who was nice enough to show them all where they could camp, but to Rey, everything seems like another cage.

“And go where?” she asks, half a joke and half not. Finn looks up from his cards at her, gaze swinging back and forth between the two of them.

“You just need space. We can all tell,” Poe admits, looking at her sympathetically.

“Leia had mentioned sending someone out to look for another spot on the planet, now that those bounty hunters showed up,” Finn suggests innocently enough, and Rey can’t hide how she perks up at the chance. Poe shrugs.

“I’ll ask her,” Rey says.

She doesn’t.

When they get back to the campground, Rey feigns needing to work on the Falcon and slips away, leaving a voice message for Leia with R2, who beeps at her in something that almost sounds like warning. Rey lovingly taps his projector and trudges off through the dense woods that surround them, breathing in the fresh air and the scent of the pine around her. Without a glance backward, Rey climbs into one of the few small land speeders they have around, procured by Leia’s friend for easy transport. It doesn’t take Rey long to travel around the planet in search of anything that looks remotely interesting. She _is_ a scavenger, after all. The planet is mostly plains, no good for hiding out in, with only the occasional forest dotted here and there, like the one they’re staying in.

The sky begins to darken above her, and Rey considers for a moment turning around, having gotten her momentary breath of aloneness that seemed necessary for the first time in her life. But she spies a riverbank, and curiosity takes over as she lowers the speeder and steps out, making for the clear water.

That’s when she feels it. The bond pulls inside of her, like a string ready to snap.

He knows she’s alone. And he’s close.

Of the many benefits of the First Order’s monetary funds, there is nothing Rey envies more than their ships. Silent, quick, and sleek - she never even hears him coming until she’s whirled around to find that he’s stepping off of his ship.

Instinct clouds judgement and Rey pulls her staff from behind her, not quite sure of the defense it will be against his lightsaber, which she notices isn’t in his hand.

“Our connection is getting stronger,” he says, _Ben Solo,_ standing before her in the flesh, after all that’s happened. _That’s_ what he says.

“Did you follow me through four different star systems to tell me what I already know?” Rey huffs, twirling her staff around to point in his general direction, needing some sort of defense against his dark eyes and the way he’s staring at her.

“How did you know it was four?” Ben asks, cocking his head ever so slightly at her, regarding the way she hasn’t moved from her fighting stance, even though he’s made no move to attack her. Rey feels her throat tighten in annoyance, half determined to lunge at him just to put him through the same misery she’s been feeling. If she could just get _one good hit_ at his _nose…_

Their conversation stands still, lingering between them as droplets of rain begin to fall from a sky that grows darker by the second. With a growl Rey turns back to the land speeder, intent on leaving him where he’s standing. If he’s not going to fight her, she doesn’t feel like hanging around.

“You’ll never make it back before the storm,” Ben states, voice just loud enough to be heard over the rumbling of the storm clouds as they roll overhead. She wants to scream at him to leave her alone, that she doesn’t have anything to say, doesn’t want to pull the lightsaber from her bag and fight him - but nothing comes out. Instead, all she does is whip around on her heel and start into the thick patch of forest she’d found, stepping over the stream with no mind as to whether or not he’s decided to follow her.

She can weather out a storm, no problem.

She _thinks_ she can, anyway. But it turns out that the rain on this planet is much colder than she’s ever felt before, and her arm bands are soaked through, providing little to no relief at all from the windy air. In seconds of her trek through the deep underbrush she’s shivering violently, eyes searching for some form of shelter. The rain is less pelting underneath the cover of trees, but every drop that hits her head feels like ice.

All thoughts of a certain Ben Solo forgotten, Rey finally locates a cave-like shelter that will do for her purposes and pulls Luke’s lightsaber from her bag, igniting it to shed light on the area and to check for any undesirable circumstances, such as creatures that she’d rather not have to deal with. There’s nothing to be found.

“You’re shivering,” Rey jumps at the sound of his voice, whirling around to find that he’s followed her into the cave and is standing at the mouth, an imposing black figure against the bare hint of light that floods in.

Rey doesn’t grant him a response, now even more annoyed than she’d been a few seconds ago. She turns away and begins gathering the small bits of dry leaves and twigs that she can find, compiling them together and using the very tip of her still-lit lightsaber to create a faint blaze. Then she sits.

Rey is good at waiting. She’ll wait out the storm, and she’ll wait for Ben Solo to leave.

But he doesn’t.

Because he is apparently intent on making her life absurdly difficult, Ben Solo follows her deeper into the cave and sits beside her as she scowls, pretending to be completely unaware of every movement he makes. It works - until she feels warm and heavy fabric settle around her shoulders. The feeling dispels most of the cold that has been circling around her, and she nearly sighs.

“Thank you,” Rey grits out, looking down at the fire to avoid looking at Ben, who is seated so close to her she can feel his warmth. “Why are you here? Why did you follow me?”

She has a _million_ more questions.

Ben leans forward with his hands folded together around his knees, long limbs tucked up in a way that doesn’t seem like it should be possible. Silence stretches between them for a moment. “I wanted to see if it would work.”

“Congratulations,” Rey snaps, “You’ve found me.”

His eyes flick sideways towards hers, his face a blanket of calm with emotions she can’t quite pick up on as he looks at her, dark eyes not scrutinizing for once, but certainly studying. “I know you’re having the dreams, too.” He says then.

“What dreams?” Rey feigns innocence, picking up her staff to poke at the fire in an attempt to grow it’s warmth. It only half works.

Beside her, Ben holds out a hand almost flippantly, the Force flowing unseen from his fingertips and causing the flame to burst higher, casting shadows and heat that warms Rey’s face. It reminds her that the Force can be used for so many things - not just violence.

“Don’t play dumb, it doesn’t work for you,” Ben says finally, his hand tucked back into the other as Rey finally turns her face to look at him. A million comments dance on her tongue but only one question comes out.

“Why do you think we can only see each other in dreams?”

He doesn’t look at her at first, just sighs a little bit.

“Don’t say, ‘I don’t know’,” she tells him, a bite of annoyance in her voice as she swings her legs around to sit facing him, tugging the warmth of his cloak further around her body and finding that it smells a little bit like him - something that reminds her of winter, leathery and smoky, the electric twinge of metal she’s always known in a way that’s smooth and deep.

Ben doesn’t respond, and she knows it’s because he truly _doesn’t know,_ just as she doesn’t.

“I like them,” he says after a few more moments of silence, as he’s still turned away from her and staring into the fire. “The dreams.”

Rey feels a blush go from the top of her head to the tips of her toes.

“They’re soft,” he continues, finally unfurling his limbs in favor of leaning back on his hands and stretching out his legs, the storm still raging loud outside the little cave they sit in. It creates an electrically charged atmosphere inside their hiding spot, wrought with quiet tension and heat that has Rey sweating despite the cool air.

“The dreams are soft,” Ben says, finally continuing the thought. “They’re peaceful. Like the one with the fire -”

“Where we woke up next to each other,” Rey finishes the thought for him. It’s the first time she’s said it out loud, the first time she’s admitted to herself what she’s always known, which was that they shared the dreams in the first place.

“Ben, why did you really follow me here?” Rey asks finally, reaching across the cool distance that separates them to place her hand on his cheek and force him to look at her. Touching him sends sparks through her fingertips and along her spine, like the Force is surging between them.

He doesn’t respond, for the umpteenth time since she’s started asking him questions. He just stares at her.

“You’re still shivering,” is what he says instead, and in a swift, smooth movement he’s yanked her forward and pressed her close, practically lifting her up to place her between his outstretched legs, her back to his chest. He whips the cloak around the both of them and Rey realizes he’s literally _got his arms around her,_ cradling her, and now she’s the perfect type of warm and also so still she can feel her every heartbeat.

“What are you _doing?”_ she finds herself asking.

“Body heat,” he says, by way of explanation, as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world. Which really, it _is,_ she just hadn’t quite expected to be in this situation when she woke up today. But when does she ever?

For a long few minutes, they are finally quiet. The roar of the fire and the sound of thundering rain are their companions, and Rey almost manages to forget that a confusing man with two names has his arms wrapped around her, because it’s so warm that she’s close to drifting off to sleep. It briefly crosses her mind that she hasn’t been this close to someone in quite a long time, and the last person may have in fact been him, when they’d fought together in Snoke’s throne room, as she leant back on him and they’d worked together as if the fight had been pre-determined, as if they could hear each other. As if they’d always known how to move together. The shape of him against her is almost familiar.

She wonders if they’d fit together so perfectly in other ways.

“I followed you because I needed to see you,” Ben says suddenly, after Rey has been cuddled against him with her eyes closed for the better half of ten minutes. “I needed to know if I could really find you - _feel you._ I needed to look at you, for real, to know that I didn’t make it all up in my head.”

Rey twists around and chances to look up at him, only to find him already there to meet her gaze.

It’s a mystery as to who actually closes the distance between them first. All Rey knows is that his lips are much softer than she could have ever imagined - and she did a lot of imagining. Ben’s hand slides from her arm to her waist, pulling her closer and turning her until she’s seated on his lap, her back to the fire. Rey’s brain is short-circuiting, her only consistent thought being something about how good his hands on her back feel, how his long fingers meet together as the small of her spine and how warm his mouth is. She tangles her hands up into his dark hair, the curls twisting around her fingertips as their chests press together.

_No, no no no no don’t do this Rey, don’t do this -_

Morality be damned, Rey falls like a stone into water when he tucks her legs around his waist and flips them over, laying her back on the stone ground where his cape has fallen with precision and gentleness she hadn’t really considered him capable of. Then his lips are leaving hers and instead tracing a path down her neck and she’s curling up against him, the fire sending soft shadows along his face as she looks down at him.

_We shouldn’t do this,_ she almost says. **_I_** _shouldn’t do this._

But nothing comes from her mouth except a high-pitched whine when he slides his hand down her leg, poised to pull off her still-damp boots. When Ben looks up in question Rey only nods, allowing him to rid her of her shoes as she pulls at the collar of his jacket to catch the zipper in her trembling fingers.

“Rey,” he says quietly, their foreheads pressed close together as he looks down at her with dark eyes. “I wanted to know that you didn’t hate me.”

“Ben -”

“Let me say it, Rey,” he pleads, still leaning over her with one hand in her hair and the other wrapped around her thigh. “I wanted - _I needed,_ to know for sure whether or not you do.”

His Force signature is quiet, waiting for her answer.

“I should,” Rey admits, and she can feel the way the dread slithers across their bond as he feels it. She takes his face in her hands. “I should. But I don’t. I don’t hate you, Ben Solo.”

“After the throne room, I thought -”

“I know what you thought,” Rey sighs, “I could never have joined you, Ben. And I think you knew that. The same way I know if I asked you to come home, you wouldn’t.”

He looks at her quietly, his thumb tracing a pattern over her neck as he settles his body down between her legs, his weight a warm and welcome feeling against her limbs. “I would have given you anything, _everything_ , Rey.”

“I don’t _need_ anything,” Rey tells him, shivering despite their closeness. “I don’t need anything. Just you.”

Their lips meet again without a word, crashing together like waves on a shore.

_I need you I need you I need you -_

Their bond hums with it, with a mutual need to feel the other, like two naked wires clashing. Rey can’t seem to catch her breath in-between the kisses they share, especially when he carefully undoes the gauze crosspiece she wears as if he already knew how she tied it, then his hands are skimming over her arms as she helps him pull off her wraps and each inch of skin they uncover together feels like fire. Ben’s jacket falls away along with a belt and Rey hardly notices, but is acutely aware all the same, of the fact that they’re pressed against each other with nothing separating them but air.

His skin is warm, littered with scars and freckles and Rey decides that it is _imperative_ that she trace every single one with her tongue, eventually. Ben lifts her up into his arms and without breaking their kiss, turns and sets her back over his lap, his hands wandering all over her as she traces the muscles of his biceps and the curve of his jaw with her fingertips. His touch is gentle but his palms are rough when he cups her breast in his hand, his mouth tracing a line from behind her ear to the hardened bud of her nipple, a sensation like an explosive shooting through her every tendon when he wraps his lips around it. Rey lets out a pathetic whimper, gripping him closer as he switches his attentions to the other breast.

“Please,” she asks, fingers wrapped tight around his wrist. Ben never falters his touch as he curls his fingers along the inside of her bare thigh, like a caress, before they find her cunt and they share a gasp, stealing air from each other’s lungs as his fingers dip up inside her. She’s warm and wet and her body takes him easily, her hips rolling with the motion of his hand. It’s then she realizes that he’s smiling against the skin of her collarbone, grinning like an absolute fool. She starts to ask why, but the words are cut off with a guttural moan as he crooks his fingers inside her and finds the soft spot that sends a flash of pleasure through her. Before she knows it, she’s panting and crying and whispering his name - but he doesn’t give her any indication that he minds.

_You are everything._

Rey isn’t sure if he’s said it out loud, if _she_ said it, or if one of them thought it - but it’s there either way. _Everything and more,_ is what it sounds like to her. Everything the two of them have ever wanted or needed or desired, no matter how wrong.

“Rey, please let me,” Ben begins to say, his lips at her ear as his hands coax her to another orgasm, one that sends her careening over a cliff and makes her shout of his name echo around the stone walls of the cave.

“Yes,” she tells him, allowing herself to be positioned in the way that he wants her, her legs tucked beneath her and parallel to his thighs where he has her seated. Rey isn’t quite sure what she expects, but the sensation she feels certainly isn’t it.

Ben meets her eyes, gaze unwavering, as he leads her to sink down onto him. The Force swirls around them, threatening to create a storm within their cave that rivals the one that rages outside. It takes their breath away. The ground shakes with it.

He feels like nothing she’s ever known. Like a piece of her universe has fallen into place with their connection, their complete togetherness.

“Rey,” he growls, and she opens her eyes as their foreheads are pressed together to find him as flushed as she is and trembling in equal fervor. Understanding his quiet plea, Rey begins to move over him, rolling her hips as he guides her with his hands around her thighs and one in her hair, his breathy gasps against her neck deliciously warm and perfect. They melt together, sinking into each other. The Force surrounds them and it’s light - warm and blinding, but beneath it lies the tendrils of darkness, of the lust that they’re sharing, of the pleasure they’re chasing with one another.

Rey loves every minute of it.

She can feel through their bond that there are so many things Ben wants to say, but they hum at the back of her mind as he stays quiet, save for the sounds of his moans and sighs of her name when he finally lays her down against the cloak, moving over her and cradling her close. Rey scratches her nails down his back, uncaring if they’ll draw blood - anything to feel him against her. Anything for him to continue moving inside her, filling her, all of him all over all of her, her skin sparking every place he touches.

It’s languid, the pace of his hips against hers dragging the most beautiful of sighs to fall from her lips, slow like pouring nectar. “Rey,” Ben whispers her name again, this time into the crook of her neck where it meets her jaw. “Come for me again.”

It’s as much a demand as a request, and she has little control over whether or not she honors it. His body pulls her through it, until she crashes down and feels the Force surge around her, radiating through her entire body from the tips of her toes to her head, and it surges again when Ben follows her, not a few moments later.

Quiet surrounds them finally, after a long few moments of only the sound of their heartbeats and the patter of the rain. Rey wonders for a moment if she should find any remorse in what she’s done, any shred of regret, but she can’t. Rey lets her head fall back onto the ground, her heart beating wildly within her chest as if it intends to escape only to latch itself to Ben’s. Ben, whose head is rested on her breast, dark hair wild from Rey’s continuous touches, as he catches his breath against her. When he finally looks up, Rey is struck with a traitorous thought.

_He’s beautiful._

Of course she’d known it all this time, but now, without the fire or destruction or hatred blazing around them, he’s the most beautiful she has ever seen him. Beautiful in a way that makes her heart flutter and makes her want to see him smile at her the way he is now every moment of every day.

“I _had_ intended, just to talk,” Ben says finally, in between deep breaths as he pushes himself up onto an elbow to better look at him, his skin still flushed all the way from his cheeks to his chest. “I’m sorry, Rey.”

“What for?” she finds herself asking, leaning up to meet him halfway, their lips almost touching again.

“All of it,” Ben says, pressing their foreheads together. “For hurting you. I never meant to, truly, I didn’t. I just,” he sighs, “I lo-“

“I know,” Rey interrupts him, unsure if she can really hear him say the words. “I know.”

Ben’s eyes are dark and his gaze is unyielding but soft, as he sighs again against her. “Help me, Rey,” he says then, his voice breaking over the words as he slides an arm around her back, falling into her in the equivalent of supplication, in their position. Rey stills. “Help me. Please.”

So many unspoken words linger between the lines of the phrase, and Rey hears every one. “I will help you, Ben Solo.”


End file.
